The order to attack the Mexican Embassy was given by the President of Ecuador

The police explained that the order came “verbally and in writing” directly from the head of state.

The former vice president, who appeared electronically from the high-security La Roca prison, recounted what happened on the night of Friday, April 5, when police entered the Mexican diplomatic headquarters.

“They threw me against the wall, hit my head, kicked me, kneed me in the thighs, and stepped on my neck,” said the former official, who described the methods used as torture.

One of the masked men said to me, “So that you remember me,” and took off my finger. Glass continued, saying that they took pictures and filmed videos “as if it were a souvenir.”

The former vice president reported that his ribs were kicked and his thumbs were dislocated.

He added: “Sooner rather than later justice will be served.”

At the hearing being held at this time, lawyer Andres Villegas, representing the defence, requested that the detention be declared unlawful and arbitrary, and proposed as a measure of reparation that an order be issued for the transfer of the detainee to a consular office in Mexico. Or to the embassy of another country.

Villegas considered that the reports presented by the police and the armed forces are “half the truth” because they do not tell what happened inside the Mexican diplomatic headquarters.

While the session continued outside the session headquarters, hundreds demanded his release, and another group supported the executive authority’s measures to arrest him.

The politician, a member of the Citizens' Revolution Movement, was temporarily granted advance release on November 28, 2022, after consolidating two prison sentences of six and eight years in the Odebrecht and bribery cases; However, this measure was cancelled.

At the beginning of this year, the judicial system ordered the arrest of the former official for alleged embezzlement in a case called Manabi Reconstruction, which investigates alleged embezzlement in public works after the 2016 earthquake.

rgh/avr